You Have the Right to Remain Silent (11 page)

Marian studied the woman, wondering what was going on. “Ms North, what are you afraid of?”

Her eyes grew huge. “Four people in this company are murdered and you ask me what I'm afraid of?”

“You think you are in danger?”

“Me? No, ah, why should I be in danger? I never said anything!”

“Never said anything? About what?”

“About anything! I don't talk outside these offices. I keep the company's confidentiality.”

Marian stepped closer to her. “I think you just told me that you do know something.”

“No I don't! I mean, I know my job, but that's all! I don't know why Mr. Bigelow was killed! Sergeant Larch, I'm trying to cooperate—please don't bully me. We're all very distressed, and this is difficult for me.”

“Of course it is,” Marian said soothingly. “I know it's not easy and I want you to understand I do appreciate your cooperation. Especially since we can't locate Mrs. Bigelow—anything you can tell me will be a help.”

The other woman looked surprised. “Mrs. Bigelow? She's at their place in Connecticut.”

It was Marian's turn to look surprised. “She told you she was going to Connecticut?”

“I talked to her on the phone yesterday,” the secretary said, obviously relieved at the change of subject. “I heard about Mr. Bigelow on the news and tried calling their apartment. But when I got the answering machine, I simply assumed she wanted to get out of the city and I called their weekend place. Mrs. Bigelow just wants to be by herself for a while. She said she can't even make arrangements for the funeral until the Medical Examiner releases the body.”

“That'll probably be today. Do you have an address in Connecticut, and a phone number?”

North wrote them down for her. Marian borrowed a phone and called Foley to tell him where he could find Mrs. Bigelow, while the secretary photocopied the appointment sheet. Marian didn't press her any further; she wanted first to see whether North's reaction was characteristic of the Universal Laser employees as a whole or not. The woman was
very
nervous.

Marian tracked down the secretaries of Conrad Webb, Herb Vickers, and Jason O'Neill. All of them tried to conceal the fact that they were afraid. Webb's secretary was a man, and Marian asked him why he didn't resign if working there made him so nervous; he stammered something about good jobs being hard to find and changed the subject. The tension wasn't limited to just the secretaries, Marian found; everyone she talked to was keyed up and edgy—a receptionist, a researcher, a couple of managers, a procurement agent. She spent a little time in the advertising department; even the air there was charged with the same edgy electricity.

The morning was almost gone. Marian sat at Jason O'Neill's desk and tried to get a fix on the situation. In a group of people this size, there ought to have been a few otherwise decent people who got a pleasurable excitement out of what had happened—the gleaming-eyed, lip-licking,
Oh-how-terrible-tell-me-about-it
reaction that had surfaced in every murder case Marian had ever investigated. But none of the Universal employees she'd talked to had reacted like that. Not one.

Marian spread out the four murdered men's appointment sheets she'd collected and studied them. They had only one appointment in common, a meeting scheduled with Edgar Quinn on Wednesday. Time to go see the boss.

Quinn's secretary seemed to know her and ushered her right in; Quinn himself was waiting for her, in an office considerably larger than all the other offices she'd been in. Marian saw immediately where the company's casual style of dress came from: Quinn was wearing a loose Armani shirt and faded jeans, no tie or jacket. And sandals—holding on to summer as long as he could, clear into September. Not your typical president of a big company. “I was wondering when you'd get around to me,” Quinn said with a dry smile.

Marian looked at the triangular face and the upswept hair; the man's face was unreadable. She told him they had a time of death for the four victims now, and asked him where he'd been on Saturday night.

His face became readable very quickly; he didn't like being asked such a question. “My wife and I went with some friends to see a show, an experimental thing in one of those dreary little SoHo theaters. Then we hit a few clubs afterward.”

“What time did the show start?”

“Eight.” He gave her the name of the show and of the friends he and his wife had been with.

The murders had taken place between six and nine; close timing. Could a man commit four murders and then calmly go out for a social evening with his wife and friends? Marian had no reason to think Quinn was behind the killings; it was just that her list of suspects was nonexistent. “You were expecting me, Mr. Quinn—you know I've been talking to your employees. Or trying to talk to them. These people here are afraid.”

Quinn made a
huh
sound. “I'm not surprised. What did you expect?
I'm
afraid. Four of our people have been murdered, for god's sake.”

“Why does a middle manager who had nothing to do with the liaison group keep looking over his shoulder? An artist in your advertising department who didn't even know three of the four victims—what's he so nervous about? What's going on, Mr. Quinn?”

He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair, sweeping it up even more. “Sergeant, maybe you're used to this sort of thing, but we're not. Conrad Webb's death alone would have rattled everybody, but when his three teammates are killed with him … well.”

“What will their deaths do to the company?”

“They'll hold up business with the Defense Department for one thing, until they can be replaced. Even then, we'll lose some time—the replacement team will have to be briefed almost from scratch.”

“Who's going to be the new liaison?”

“I don't know yet. I'll have to go to Washington myself in a day or so, but I haven't had time to work up a permanent group. I may ask Elizabeth to take over—Elizabeth Tanner, our vice president in charge of production. She's been in on it from the beginning.”

“In on what?”

Quinn shot her a sharp look. “The project we're working on for the Defense Department.”

“Is that the Top Secret one you can't talk about?”

“That's the one. And I still can't talk about it.”

“What about the meeting you had scheduled for Wednesday? The one with all four murder victims?”

“A briefing for their next trip to Washington. And I can't tell you about
that
, either.”

Marian took a deep breath. “Mr. Quinn, the NYPD is working with the FBI on this case, on an equal information-sharing basis.”
Hah
. “Whatever your project is, we'll learn about it eventually.”

He shook his head. “Then you'll have to learn it from the FBI, not from me. We could lose the contract if I shoot off my mouth. There's a reason for all this hush-hush stuff, Sergeant. Over the past forty years every single new development in technology has been immediately followed by another designed to neutralize it. So any edge we might have is lost once specifics of the new development are known. We once built a device for Israeli tanks to detect a particular laser-targeting weapon the Syrians had—
before
the Syrian lasers were ready for use. All because of leaked information.”

“Aren't you giving something away?” Marian asked wryly.

Quinn smiled. “No, both those devices are obsolete now. But you do see my point, don't you? Each new generation of technology has only a short life span. Its period of effectiveness is determined solely by how long it takes for countering devices to be developed. And once that happens, new technology is needed to counter
those
devices—and on and on ad infinitum. That's not ever going to change.”

Marian scowled. “What a depressing thought. About this leaking of information—could Mr. Webb and the others have learned anything in Washington that made them a danger to someone?”

“I'm sure they didn't. They would have informed Elizabeth Tanner or me immediately if they had. Unless it was something one of them didn't want to pass on?”

What's this
? “Didn't want to? You mean one of them might have deliberately kept something from you?”

Again the fingers through the hair. “Dammit, Sergeant, I don't
want
to think that! Do you think I like suspecting one of my own people of working against me?”

“Working against you how? Selling secrets?”

“What else could it be? Maybe the deal went sour, and the buyer felt cheated or was afraid his source would talk—I don't know.”

“Then why kill all four of them? Could they all have been in on it?”

“Impossible!” Quinn looked offended by the question. “Conrad Webb would no more sell out this company than he'd slit his own throat. I don't know why they were all killed. As a precautionary measure?”

“Some precaution,” Marian remarked. “If one of them did sell you out, which one do you think it was?”

“I have no idea.”

“Guess.”

He shrugged. “Jason O'Neill.”

“Why him?”

“He was the youngest, he hadn't been with us as long. Jason hadn't had the time to build up a sense of company loyalty like the others.”

“And that's your only reason for picking him? The fact that he hadn't worked for you as long as the other three?”

“That's my only reason.”

It wasn't much of one. “Did you tell all this to the FBI?”

“No.” Quinn sighed deeply. “And frankly I'm already regretting saying anything to you. I don't really
know
anyone sold me out. It's just that I can't think of any other reason they'd be killed. Speaking of the FBI, did you run into them? They're here now.”

“No, I didn't know. Where—”

“Five of them. Four accountants and a computer man, looking for irregularities in the books or hidden files or whatever. Tying up five computers and wasting everybody's time … as if the answer to why Conrad and his team were murdered can be found in a data base.”

Marian asked for directions to Elizabeth Tanner's office; Quinn's vice president in charge of production would probably say the same things her boss had said, but her name should go on the no-stone-unturned list. On her way Marian mulled over what Quinn had said … or had not said. He'd seemed more concerned about the possibility that one of his men had sold him out than he was about the murders themselves. His insistence that the tension in the company was understandable considering the circumstances—well, that was entirely reasonable, Marian had to admit.

The sight of Elizabeth Tanner made Marian sigh with relief; she hated having her favorite preconceptions about big business demolished all at once. Elizabeth Tanner was one of those people who at first glance could be anywhere between thirty-five and sixty; second glance put her in her early to mid-forties. But more importantly, she looked exactly the way Marian somewhat cynically thought a woman business executive had to look: fashionably anorexic, carefully made up with not one hair out of place, and wearing a suit so expensive that it went past sinful into some unique monied realm of its own. Tanner looked like a movie star
playing
a businesswoman.

Also, she fairly oozed self-confidence. “Sergeant Larch? I hope you can tell me the police are close to finding the killer. It's been a day and a half now.” Taking control of the interview from the outset, just the way she'd been taught in management seminars.

“We have a few leads,” Marian answered noncommittally. “Ms Tanner, Edgar Quinn—”

“Mrs. Tanner.”

“Mrs. Tanner.” Whatever happened to
Ms
as the catch-all female honorific? “Edgar Quinn tells me you've been in on the Defense Department project from the beginning. I know you can't tell me what the project is, but did any of the liaison men come back from Washington with anything unusual? Any kind of information at all that you weren't expecting?”

She didn't have to think about it. “Nothing. I wondered the same thing myself, so I went over all my notes of our meetings, looking for some clue as to why they were killed. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.”

“What about outside the meetings? Casual talk, something mentioned in passing?”

Tanner pursed her lips. “I believe Conrad Webb was the only one I saw outside a meeting. He and Edgar and I had lunch on Thursday. It was casual talk mostly. The only Washington-related bit I remember is a rather naughty story Conrad told about a certain senator from the Midwest.” She closed her eyes to think. “No, there was nothing.”

“Edgar Quinn thinks one of them may have sold him out,” Marian suggested.

The other woman shot her a sharp look. “Does he, now? I suppose you mean selling industrial secrets to a competitor?”

“To anyone willing to pay, I imagine.”

“That widens the field of suspects considerably, doesn't it? Do you think he's right?”

“You're in a better position to know that than I am,” Marian pointed out.

“Then I'd say he's wrong. Sergeant Larch, none of those men would have sold the company out. It just wouldn't have been smart. They all owned a piece of Universal. It was a policy Edgar's father started, to assure loyalty. Nearly half this company is owned by its employees.”

“Including you?”

“Of course. Conrad held the largest number of shares, Herb Vickers and Sherman Bigelow less but still sizable amounts. But even Jason O'Neill was given the opportunity to buy in, six months after he was hired—an opportunity he took advantage of immediately, I might add. Selling company secrets would have hurt each one of them, in varying degrees. No, whatever's behind the murders, it isn't that.”